Biden Is Helping Netanyahu Attack Iran – and Risking the Lives of US Troops in the Process
By sending troops and the powerful THAAD anti-missile system to Israel, the US is only fueling escalation in the Middle East.
Zeteo
October 15, 2024
Trita Parsi
President Joe Biden’s decision to deploy the THAAD advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with roughly 100 US service members, reinforces an undeniable reality: Israel is the country most likely to drag the US into another unnecessary war in the Middle East – and Biden is the president most likely to oblige Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war wishes.
After a year of Netanyahu repeatedly violating Biden’s ostensive red lines and acting in contradiction to the US president’s expressed wishes, there is little to suggest that Biden has seriously tried to stop Israel’s carnage in Gaza or sought to prevent Netanyahu from broadening the war. Rather, Biden’s strategy appears to have been to pace Israel’s escalations while softening its edges to avoid the inevitable international outcry and push back from becoming prohibitive. Biden is managing Israel’s war rather than ending it.
It
is against this backdrop that Biden’s decision to deploy US troops and
THAAD missiles in Israel is best understood. While Biden has claimed opposition to further escalation in the region, his strategy has been to solely pressure and deter the so-called “Axis of Resistance”
– Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi and Syrian militias, and Hamas –
from taking escalatory steps while actively reducing the cost for Israel
to widen the war.
Every time Netanyahu escalates the conflict – such as by striking the consular section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, assassinating Hamas’ political head in Tehran on the day of the new Iranian president's inauguration, or invading Lebanon –
Biden rushes to defend Israel from the consequences of its own
escalation. By that, Biden reduces the risk and cost of widening the war
to Israel while increasing the risk and cost to the US.
Had Biden refrained from adding additional defensive capabilities to Israel after it needlessly intensified the conflict, the cost of escalation would have been higher for Israel – perhaps even prohibitive. Israel would have thought twice. But because Israel knows that Biden will come to its defense every time it ups the ante, Netanyahu has few reasons not to escalate. This helps explain the steady pace of Israeli escalatory steps since October 2023.
But Biden is going further than ever before in terms of exposing the US to risk.
He is gambling with the lives of American troops by putting them in the middle of a war zone – in another country’s war.
If, in the next exchange of fire, Iran targets Israeli military sites as it did in April and October, US troops may end up getting killed since they will be manning the THAAD air defense systems. That will be on Biden as he has needlessly chosen to put them in the line of fire.
Some may argue a cynical Netanyahu would even be delighted if Americans were killed. Dead American soldiers will further draw the US into Israel's war of choice, deepening the US’ entrapment in the Middle East at a time when geopolitical imperatives dictate a pivot away from this region.
Yet, the more Israel draws American support to hold up its air defenses and sustain its expansive war efforts, the more it shatters the myth that the US-Israeli relationship is mutually beneficial due to Israel’s capacity to amplify US power.
The past 12 months have proven that without unprecedented US military aid, Israel would not have been able to conduct its war against the people of Gaza or against Lebanon. As my Quincy colleague William Hartung and the researchers at the Cost of War project have revealed, the Biden administration has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war broke out. And that does not take into account the $4.86 billion the US has spent on its own military operations in the region in support of Israel, such as the bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen or the shooting down of Iranian missiles targeting Israel in April.
Indeed, absent the US boosting of Israel’s air defenses back in April, Israel would likely not have escaped unscathed as Iran targeted it with a barrage of missiles and drones in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of Tehran’s embassy compound in Damascus.
In both instances, Tehran proved its ability to penetrate Israel’s air defenses, revealing the significant vulnerabilities of the Iron Dome, as well as other defense systems such as the Arrow 1 and 2 and David’s Sling. The deployment of the THAAD is an implicit acknowledgment of both the weaknesses of these systems and the potency of Iran’s missile capabilities.
This reveals an uncomfortable truth for Israel’s defenders in Washington: Rather than amplifying American power, Israel is consuming and depleting American strength while destroying the US’ global standing.
The United States is more isolated at the UN on the Middle East than Russia is on Ukraine. When the General Assembly adopted a historic resolution last month demanding the termination of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, only 13 other countries voted with the US against the resolution. Five of them were Polynesian island states completely dependent on the US for their security and economic development.
The US even chose not to run for a second term on the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, likely fearing that it would lose the vote due to global anger over Biden’s support for Israel’s war crimes. According to Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, the “Biden administration seems to have calculated that it was better to withdraw voluntarily than to face the prospect of such a shameful repudiation.”
Biden’s
blind support for Israel neither helps Israel nor the United States. A
state of perpetual war will never win Israel security or recognition.
Nor will a foreign policy that puts the reckless desires of a
problematic partner ahead of US national interest restore America’s
global standing, revive its leadership, or safeguard its security.
Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute